


and I guess that's why they call it the blues

by Reichenbachstag



Series: Dealing with the aftermath [1]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Childhood Sweethearts, Elton John - Freeform, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jules Verne - Freeform, this fic has it all, trans Raoul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25404985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reichenbachstag/pseuds/Reichenbachstag
Summary: Raoul reminisces his childhood with Christine and everything that happened after they parted ways.
Relationships: Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé
Series: Dealing with the aftermath [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839994
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	and I guess that's why they call it the blues

He is eight years old strutting by his brother’s heel bursting with the fact that their father had finally allowed him to wear Phillipe’s old clothes.  
It is summer and as long as he can remember that has meant promises of the sea and adventure.  
He turns when he hears the scream. The most beautiful girl he has ever layed eyes on is standing by the water, weeping. In the distance he sees a red piece of cloth drift off.  
The splash of the waves hitting him drowns out Phillipe’s angered shouts as he dashes off into the sea.

Her father plays at their family’s soiree and he could cry if he had not heard his father whipping his older brother for letting the tears spill.  
He does anyway.

Christine. Her name is Christine and she smiles when he introduces himself as Raoul.   
His sisters will not cease their teasing about how fond he grows of her.  
Of how she will steal her father’s English chocolates for him, of how she will comfort him when he cannot bear to hear the stories of the north she reads to him from the thick book and of how her and her father play the violin just so gently they might as well be playing on his heartstrings.  
And grows fond of her father who calls him ‘the little captain’ as well. Who is willing to lend The Adventures of Captain Hatteras to him and discuss the great lost Franklin expedition to the artic with the boy.

From then on summers mean sharing the sea and adventure with his dearest friend.

His third summer with Christine overwhelms him like a tidal wave. His father is not with them anymore which means Phillipe firmly reminds his sisters that he is now Raoul Vicomte de Chagny.  
All the same the young Comte is more than happy to let Gustave Daaé take care of his youngest sibling.

When he reaches fifteen his Christine stands almost two inches taller than him and there could be nothing more stressful than the apologies he makes up for not being able to catch his breath after chasing her over the beach or his imminent refusal to go swimming.  
He lasts two weeks in Perros before he can convince himself to tell her. It cannot look good how he falls to his knees in her father’s attic – tears streaming over his face, begging her to not shy away from him.  
She does not.

He is nineteen and he is more in love with her than ever. Christine must know.   
How she cradles his face tells him that she finally feels the same.  
Her brows are knit with worry, but her eyes are full of fondness when he tells her the haircut his station in the national marine demands.  
For the first time in his life his hair does not reach his shoulders.  
His brother gently pats him on the back and tells him he is their father’s spitting image in uniform, his sisters nod in agreement and dry their tears with their handkerchiefs.  
Raoul falls into their arms.  
Gustave smiles and remarks that he can hardly call him ‘the little captain’ anymore now that he is grown and then asks sheepishly what he has done wrong that Raoul does not wish to mirror his hair anymore.  
He laughs and says his hair will be long again by the time he gets back.

Then he is alone with Christine who cries and does not let him go.  
It is not forever he tells her, begs her to not wish his time as a naval man away and reminds her to think of his face in her hands when he is far north.

When he is twenty-four, he receives a letter from mainland that Gustave has passed. Christine ceases to write him after that and he paces the ship deck looking like a ghost, thin with dark sunken in eyes, his unruly hair overgrown.  
Suddenly the wish to follow his heroes James Clark Ross and Jules Dumont d'Urville to the faraway cold coasts does not seem to far fetched but more like a possible next step in his naval career. 

He is twenty-five when he begrudgingly returns to Paris wanting nothing more than to return to the open waters – when he is not offered to join another expedition he instead invests his share of the families fortune in the opera house, something Phillipe scowls at him for.  
Now he cannot sneak to the stage door to see his mistress without the managers stopping the Comte de Chagny dead in his tracks to ask if everything was to his liking.  
He is twenty-five when his heart catches aflame when he spots Christine onstage.  
He is madly in love when he asks her to marry him.  
He is scratching at a too tight rope – clawing for his life days later.

He is twenty-five when he becomes the Comte de Chagny and buries his brother and marries Christine.

**Author's Note:**

> First of all happy birthday Al! Hope this tickles your fancy at least a little! Love you!  
> The Adventures of Captain Hatteras is a book by Jules Verne that mentions   
> Sir James Clark Ross (a very succesful British naval explorer) quite a lot.  
> Jules Dumont d'Urville was a french antarctic explorer.


End file.
